One Minute Sculptures
- Artist: Erwin Wurm
- Date: 1997
- Medium: Photograph, c-print on paper
- Dimensions: support: 450 x 300 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “One Minute Sculptures” by Erwin Wurm, a colour photograph from 1997. Wurm launched the series in 1988 and has kept adding new pieces worldwide. The idea is simple yet surprising: a volunteer, an artist, a curator or even Wurm himself is instructed—by written or pictorial cues—to assume a particular pose with an everyday object: a bucket, a bicycle frame, a piece of clothing, a ball, even a piece of bread. The participant holds that stance for exactly sixty seconds, and the camera captures it. The image we see is the final record, but the true work is the fleeting, playful moment of interaction and transformation.
The photograph turns ordinary objects into absurd companions, creating illogical still‑lives that feel both humorous and provocative. It plays with the boundaries between sculpture, performance and photography, inviting us to question how we use objects, how we see ourselves in space, and how a single minute can become a miniature sculpture of motion and humor.
See it in person
One Minute Sculptures is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
